Tag: inspiration

Almost two decades ago today, Life of Pi was first published. In honor of the publication anniversary of this international bestseller, we’ve gathered together some of the most insightful quotes from Yann Martel’s smash hit. Come along with us as we relive Pi’s amazing journey!

Image via Amazon

1 – It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.

2 – To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

3 – If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

4 – You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

5 – If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?

6 – Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

7 – I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.

Image Via Amazon

Walhberg and Kormakur previously worked together on 2 Guns in 2013, but this film seems to be much different in tone and subject matter. Arthur chronicles the story of Mikael Lindnord, the captain of a Swedish adventure racing team. During a race through the Ecuadorian jungle, Mikael encountered a stray dog. After the team fed the dog a meatball, Arthur followed them through some of the toughest terrain on the planet. Mikael even ended up adopting Arthur after the race and brought him back to Sweden!

The film looks to be a heartwarming and emotional journey following the team’s struggle through the race. If you want to learn more about the story before the movie comes out, check out Mikael Lindford’s account of this inspirational story! Nonfiction fans are sure to love this one.

The story of the race will appeal to readers interested in endurance, while the story about the powerful connection that can develop between people and dogs will find a broader readership among dog lovers.

Are you excited for this new adaptation? Are you going to read the book first? Let us know on Facebook and Instagram!

Do your elaborate fantasies all center around the ornate home library you’ll someday build? Do you need some inspo? We’ve got your back, because we’ve been thinking about the same thing basically non-stop. It’s our only dream. Here are some good photos to get you hype.

1. Traditional

Image via Trendir

Do you have a spiral staircase? Someone must. Take advantage by making your home library look like an Austin novel with wood paneling, bare windows, and some varyingly aesthetic antique furniture. Perfect for taking a turn about the room—or the stacks.

2. Modern

Image via The Spruce

Your style more modern? Those chairs look perfect for a long book melt, and the ladder is a great take on classic library design. Plus all your art books will pop against the white shelving. Just be sure not to spill your tea on anything.

3. Minimalist

Image via Trendir

Keep it simple and straightforward with shelves and a seating arrangement. The antique, almost industrial windows don’t hurt, adding some sparse flare. This one is easy to achieve, since all you have to do is get rid of most of the furniture.

4. For Two-Story Spaces

Omage via Luxe Daily

One level simply not enough for your enormous collection? #goals. This walkway looks almost like a fire escape, and between that and the variously glossy greys on the first floor, this whole room evokes a kind of urban elegance, even with trees out the window.

5. For Small Spaces

Image via Bustle

Sometimes you’ve not got a huge room to dedicate to your library, but don’t let that slow you down. This reading nook is perfect for compact spaces, taking advantage of storage under the seating, and making the chaise a feature so it hardly matters the ceiling is so low.

6. For Houses

Image via Design Sponge

Have a room for your library that you also need to function? This is the perfect blend of library and sitting room, emphasizing comfort, books, and the outdoors, it’s an effective mixed use space that also makes room for what’s important—books.

7. For Apartments

Image via Pintrest

You don’t have to have grand windows and big empty spaces to make a modern home library. Even if your apartment is underground, a bunch of soft lights and plush details can make a cozy and stylish reading feature just as well as any other style.

Beverley Bass, the first female pilot to be promoted to Captain on American Airlines, has written a picture-book autobiography for children!

Image Via Flight To Success

Beverly Bass’s story is an inspiration one, even though she never set out to be an inspiration. A native of Fort Myers, Florida, Bass, around the age of nine or ten, Bass saw a sign offering plane rides and set about raising the money. However, her aunt was staunchly against this and forbade her to go up into the air.

However, her urge to fly stayed inside her. After graduating high school in 1970, Bass went to study Spanish and Interior Design at Texas Christian University. After her first year at university, it was 1971 and Bass began to learn how to fly.

According to her logs, she spent an astonishing six hours at the Fort Worth meacham airport each afternoon from 3-9pm each weekday.

One day, when Bass “had 300 hours of flight time,” she was asked to fly the body of a young woman to Arkansas for a mortician. Since 500 hours were required by the mortician’s insurance, the mortician had to secure a waive. He did, and Bass flew a single-engine Bonanza, an aircraft so small she had to step over the corpse to climb into the cockpit.

“I was responsible for everything in that plane, and it felt so empowering,” Bass later recalled, “I loved every minute.”

Image Via SF Chronicle Datebook

Bass received a bachelor’s degree in May 1974. Two years later she moved to Dallas’ Love Field to fly canceled checks for banks, Fotomat film, and airplane parts, in order to build up more flight hours.

Frontier Airlines had hired its first female pilot in 1973, and she wanted to be the next one.

Image Via Malibu Shirts

But her day at Frontier Airlines wouldn’t come. Instead, come 1976, she landed an interview with American Airlines, nailed the simulator portion, passed the questioning process with flying colors, and at twenty-four she was American Airline‘s third female pilot.

Come October 1986 bass had risen through the ranks to become American Airlines’ first female captain. Quickly afterwards, Bass made international headlines when she led the first all-female crew in aviation history on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Dallas, Texas.

Image Via The New York Times

Since then, Bass has been portrayed in the play Come from Away, a Canadian musical written by Irene Sankoff and David Hein.

Image Via Center Theatre Group

Set in the week following the September 11th attacks, the musical tells how Bass and thirty-seven other planes were ordered to land unexpectedly in the small town of Gander in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, as part of Operation Yellow Ribbon.

Lost, abandoned, 7,000 stranded travelers found hope when the residents of Gander housed and fed them.

Image Via KCTS 9

The play was first produced at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, in 2013, but went on to have record-breaking runs at California’s La Jolla Playhouse and the Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2015 and at Washington, D.C.’s Ford’s Theatre and Toronto’s Royale Alexandra Theatre.

Co-authored by Cynthia Williams and illustrated by Joanie Stone, the book is geared toward readers ages 4-8. The book will explore Bass’ amazing life and tell of how “she went from an ambitious young girl gazing up at the sky to a groundbreaking pilot smiling down from the cockpit.”

Hopeful this gets many young readers believing that they can reach their dreams, no matter how high they might seem!

As an English teacher, Jane Broadis has read her fair share of student-penned poetry. However, none had ever inspired her as much as a poem recently written by a student with learning disability dyslexia.

The assignment instructed the class to write a poem that could be read both forwards(from top to bottom) and backwards (from bottom to top). Broadis was so impressed with this particular poem that she shared it online. Take a look:

Image via Jane Broadis/Twitter.

As upsetting as it is to read the poem forwards, the beauty of this ten-year-old child turning the narrative around the way she does is wonderful!

Today in Y6 we looked at poems that could be read forwards & backwards. I was stunned by this one written by one of my 10 year olds. Please share – I would love her work to be appreciated further afield. I wonder if it could even find a publisher? pic.twitter.com/tmEQpiRrhq

Broadis’ post has garnered over 30,000 retweets and more than 100,000 likes, and the comments that followed are as inspiring as the poem itself, with many people sharing their own stories of showing the world what they’re made of in spite of their disability!

Thanks. My second grade teacher threw a paper in my face and asked if I was stupid. My parents got me dyslexia training through the Shriners. Result: 2 college degrees and a 40 year career as a journalist/writer.

I am dyslexic, I learn differently, I find some of the things my brain comes up with hilarious. This young students poem is wonderful. Well done. Dyslexia doesn’t stop you doing anything. You just have to find a way around the obsticle. Side step it.

Let’s give everyone a chance and try to understand the meaning behind the words we share, rather than judging one another for doing things that may seem strange. Everyone has their own way with words after all.

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